Melanurus Wrasse

Quite possibly. He had this one in the shop for 3-4 weeks, as he said, with another melanurus in one of the other tanks in the segment. You know, in the rows of 3. He said the other sold a couple days before I came in, so it could be at the beginning of a change from that.

I'm liking the digging through scientific literature to figure this one out lol. I don't know if they actually fully change color and patterning in that month, Dingo. That may be from male to female reproductive organs, with the colors taking longer.

 

heres something i just read in two separate scholarly articles about all wrasses in the labridae family (aka all Halichoeres wrasses fall under this)

When they first become a male, they stay in a phase called the initial phase (IP). these are the ones that are male but not brightly colored and mate with females secretively behind the "alpha" males back. They can stay in this phase for only a very short period of time or up until the end of their life.
When a Halichoeres wrasse becomes larger and is able to dominate other males and acquire his own harem, he will then transition his colors to the terminal male phase (TP) which is where they obtain the very vibrant coloring and the "flashiness" in their colors.

That is a great fact to know for this hobby and I cant believe that it has not been discussed before! it explains a lot
It also makes a lot of sense because when you have a single male flasher wrasse his colors will be like a male but faded (IP), when females are added he will color up since he is the dominant male around and in charge of a harem (TP)

 

Wow, that's definitely interesting! Gotta love how much information there is out there, just "hidden" in academia and not out in the hobby!

You said that it can only stay in IP for a short period of timr o the end of their life, though. Does that mean it needs to make the transition from IP to TP quickly or it will never be able to, or does that mean after a while it'll transition to TP regardless as to whether he has a harem...?

 

It did not specify... I assume the conditions of either 1. another male competition or 2. a female must be met, otherwise it would have no biological motive to go TP (just like how I got a single male mccoskers wrasse from a tank where it had a harem and it was showing its TP colors. when introduced into my female-less tank over the duration of 2 weeks it lost all of its TP coloring and only exhibited the IP coloring for the duration of its life)


also, I finally found the answer to our original question: http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/spe...alichoeres&speciesname=melanurus&lang=English

 

Hrm, kinda sucks that it won't go full color without a female present, if that's the case. I don't know how well a pair would do in my tank, which is already a bit overstocked with pod eaters. I mean, it would get enough food from feedings, but my mandarin would likely not have enough to eat.

As for the original question, fishbase seems to show a bunch of males without spots, and doesn't mention the male as having any spots. So both disappear once it goes TP male, I guess.

 

I think yours is going from female to IP male right now. The store's timeline even fits properly... but I was snooping through pics of this wrasse on other forums and a bunch of people have TP males alone in a tank, so maybe unlike flashers, these guys go TP in the case of no other dominant males present

 

Quite the interesting discussion here, but i wouldn't compare to the flasher genus. I watch my faries behave quite differently than my flashers.

In my mated pair of flames, the only discernable difference between them, besides size, is fin coloration (as Lady was indicating).

 

Quite the interesting discussion here, but i wouldn't compare to the flasher genus. I watch my fairies behave quite differently than my flashers.

In my mated pair of flames, the only discernible difference between them, besides size, is fin coloration (as Kacy was indicating).

 

What may be the case is that once they hit TP, they don't revert to IP like the flashers. We need to hear from a bunch of people who have halichoeres wrasses to find out whether they bought them as TP males, or they transformed to TP males while in confinement.

I mean, I'll likely find out within a month, but it would still be nice to know for sure lol.

 

I'm going to keep a picture log of the transformation, taking pics every couple days, since this information on the change doesn't seem to be readily available. It'll be on this thread.